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Tuesday, December 3, 2013

[IntDPD Debate] "A political party of the area of "direct and participatory" democracy is a left/progressive or a right/conservative party?" (Answer 1/10) Joám Evans Pim (Partido da Terra) http://www.partidodaterra.net (Galiza)

"(...) Advocacy for direct democracy is neither
left/progressive or a right/conservative. Those empowered through direct
democracy to make decisions will adopt positions that they consider
appropriate regarding the problem that is being discussed.(...)Or abolishing the State as an anti-democratic institution (i.e., libertarian municipalism)"(...)"I
think it is important to discourage any paternalistic approach of
teaching the masses. I'm not sure what is the case of Romania, but most
rural societies (at least in Europe) keep traces of their past assembly
(direct democracy) form of community government. In our case in Galiza
(which is also applicable to most of Northern Iberia and Portugal), our
work is directed mainly at helping people connect the old form of
community assembly government with politics, i.e.: we are all
"politicians" (not just those elected), there should be no such thing as
"professional politicians", and no issue is beyond the capabilities of
discussion, deliberation and decision by a sovereign community assembly.

This
is very much in line, as Evan pointed out, with the community councils
and Good Governance Regional Juntas of the Zapatistas or the ideas of
Libertarian Municipalism, even though we are not emulating any model
here in Galiza but creating our own from our past experience and current
communal ways of organization. If you can read Portuguese or use an
online translator, here is an example of an attempt to introduce
assembly direct democracy at the municipal level using the breaches of
current State law: http://concelho.titanpad.com/1 Even
though we do try to run in all elections to make use of the free media
space to send the message out (and discredit professional politics and
representative parliamentarism by all means), we feel there are only
options (in our case) of making political change at this moment at the
municipal level."